The computer is evolving in 100 distinctive instructions, and wherein it in the end ends up is something to be able to be determined by means of you and every different PC user. This evolution began with the appearance of Windows eight and its touch-pleasant interface, for which we've seen all styles of new designs emerge, the entirety from the funky to the funktastic. Lenovo, now the pinnacle PC supplier within the global, hasn't been afraid to experiment with special form factors and features, for this reason the enterprise's Yoga line and, in a more conventional feel, the Y70 Touch being reviewed here.
Lenovo's Y70 Touch isn't always a wild departure from the laptop designs you are used to seeing. In reality, it broadly speaking seems like a median pocket book, best sleeker and barely extra aggressive than maximum. But not like that getting older Windows 7 or Vista computer you're using, the Y70 Touch boasts a 17.three-inch Full HD 1080 (1920x1080) multi-touch show. It's Lenovo's largest touchscreen pc up to now, and it is built for gaming, video enhancing, and to be an all-around paintings horse for the present day technology.
Lenovo Y70 Touch - $1,399.ninety nine
- 17.3" 1,920 x 1,080 IPS w/ multitouch
- 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-4710HQ
- 16GB DDR3L 1,600MHz RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M GPU 2GB GDDR5
- 1TB 5400 RPM + 8GB Solid State Hybrid Drive
- Backlit keyboard
- 2 x USB 3.zero , 1 x USB 2.zero, HDMI, Kensington Lock
- four-in-1 card reader
- Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.zero
- Windows 8.1 64-bit
- 7.5 lbs, sixteen.7 x eleven.4 x 1.02 inches
It's also nicely geared up, or apparently so. Our configuration (80DU004HUS) got here packing a fourth era Intel Core i7 4710QH processor clocked at 2.5GHz, 16GB of DDR3L-1600 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M pictures with 2GB of GDDR5 reminiscence, and a 1TB strong kingdom hybrid power with 8GB of flash-based garage, a spacious compromise over a devoted (and pricier) SSD, though hampered by using a sluggish spinning spindle (just 5400 RPM – boo!).
In terms of supplementary functions, the Y70 Touch boasts a pair of SuperSpeed USB three.zero ports, a single USB 2.0 port for nostalgia, four-in-1 card reader, HDMI output to bore the in-laws together with your excursion pictures at the large display TV, SPDIF, a Gigabit LAN port, an audio combo jack, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.zero, JBL stereo audio system with Dolby Advanced Audio v2, 720p webcam, backlit keyboard (incomes Lenovo a fist-bump), and a four-cellular 54Whr battery. We additionally received a narrow USB DVD burner with our computer, which is speedy becoming a trend among OEM and boutique gadget builders as they move far from incorporated optical drives.
This is a unique configuration of the Y70 Touch line that we discovered promoting at Best Buy for $1,four hundred, the same charge as Lenovo’s cheapest model online, the difference being ours has double the RAM at 16GB – the $1,400 configuration on Lenovo’s website sports 8GB. There are different pre-configured options on Lenovo’s product web page, a $1,500 model with 16GB of RAM and double the GDDR5 memory for the GPU (4GB), and an $1,800 configuration featuring the equal improvements plus a devoted 512GB SSD. Unfortunately, you can't personalize any of these setups on the time of buy, at the least outside of adding software program and accessories.
There’s absolute confidence Lenovo is concentrated on gamers and PC fans with the Y70 Touch. The styling isn’t quite as formidable and competitive as some of Asus ROG’s G Series laptops, however diffused angles and accents at some point of the build deliver the device a greater menacing look than the crop of notebooks that commonly fill a board room. Even the brushed aluminum motif (it’s definitely plastic) is slightly precise – in place of use unmarried brush strokes in any precise course, Lenovo opted for a more unusual crisscross sample.
The the front of the chassis is ever-so-barely tapered and includes blue LED indicators for energy, battery, touchpad (whether or not it’s enabled or disabled), and force interest. Over at the left facet of the laptop you’ll discover the proprietary AC strength adapter jack, Ethernet port, HDMI output, and two USB 3.0 ports, even as the proper facet homes the S/PSIDF jack, combo audio jack, memory card slot, USB 2.zero port, and a Kensington lock slot. There are not any cooling vents on both facet, or even the again – only a few dummy grilles that are there for seems.
Popping open the Y70 Touch’s lid famous the 17.3-inch multi-contact display. It’s an IPS panel with a 1920x1080 decision supported with the aid of a strong hinge layout that doesn’t yield any play when poking and swiping at the display screen. It also boasts brilliant and crisp shades with beneficiant viewing angles, as are standard of most IPS panels. If we were to muster up a complaint, it'd be that a 17.three-inch panel is a high candidate for a 3K or maybe 4K decision for brought real property, even though scaling problems and the brought call for on the GPU (whilst gaming) are drawbacks that Lenovo avoids via sticking with a Full HD 1080 show.
Lenovo is understood for its curved keycaps, which lend themselves to a extra herbal and accurate typing experience, and that’s what you’ll locate on the Y70 Touch. However, the low profile layout chews away on the brownie points we'd have otherwise offered Lenovo – it’s a chunk of an adjustment coming from a wellknown keyboard with greater key tour than the Y70’s pancake plank. On the bright aspect (actually), it boasts a pink LED backlight to make typing to your darkened guy cave a chunk easier. There’s also a devoted numpad, so whilst it comes time to show off the sport and fudge your tax return, you won’t need to exchange PCs.
Sitting below and rancid-middle to the left of the keyboard is a giant touchpad. Like the lid, it’s highly sensitive to finger grease and will make you think you’re more of a slob than you absolutely are. So, be organized for common wipe downs. You can disable the touchpad through pressing Fn+F6; likewise you could re-enable it the use of the same hotkey aggregate.
The Y70 Touch has a top rate appearance and experience to it thank you in component to the rubberized coating that wraps across the touchpad and keyboard. Towards the bottom, there’s masses of room to relaxation your wrists, and up above JBL stereo audio system pipe audio out of a pair of sharply angled speaker grilles. Laptop audio system are hardly ever whatever to crow about, and as we suspected would be the case, hard thumping bass is sorely lacking. However, the audio is a ways from tinny – it’s a step or three above maximum built-in cans with sufficient extent to fill a small room, which is right news if you’re a college student headed off to dorm lifestyles or occupy a small condo.
Underneath are a couple of dome rubber bumpers in the direction of the front and a long rubber strip that runs alongside the back to preserve the Y70 Touch from sliding around. What you gained’t find at a look is an easily detachable battery, even though if you make the effort to take away an entire bunch of tiny screws, you could pop the lowest renovation panel off (lift up and push forward) and toss it aside to gain get right of entry to to the machine’s guts, including the battery.
Other than to change the battery, one of the reasons you might want to do that is to update the gradual spinning hybrid force with a devoted SSD for brought performance, as we’ll get into in only a moment. If you ordered the bottom give up configuration on Lenovo’s internet site, it also wouldn’t hurt to double the amount of RAM to 16GB, mainly in case you’re into content material advent, edit quite a few photographs, or need to live ahead of the gaming curve.
System and Performance
The Y70 Touch came to our doorstop wielding the 64-bit taste of Windows 8.1 (it has a sweeter flavor than the 32-bit version). One aspect we appreciated to see proper off the bat is that the device wasn’t bogged down via bloat. It did include some third-party programs, even though outside of McAfee, there has been not anything egregious that loaded at startup.
Unfortunately, that didn’t assist with our cold boot time. We clocked it at 38 seconds from powering on to accomplishing the computer, that is around three instances longer than both the MSI GS70 Stealth Pro and Maingear Pulse 15. That's because of the SSHD and pre-hooked up antivirus software program.
All pics-based totally benchmarks (unless otherwise mentioned) have been accomplished with the discrete Nvidia GPU decided on because the advocated pictures card within the Nvidia manage panel.
Compared to the aforementioned MSI and Maingear rigs, Lenovo’s Y70 Touch is at a GPU disadvantage with its GeForce GTX 860M GPU versus the GTX 870M. Specifically, it’s operating with less shaders (1152 in comparison to 1344), texture devices (ninety six in comparison to 112), ROPs (16 in comparison to 32), and has a narrower memory bus (128-bit as compared to 192-bit), to highlight the principal technical differences.
Those variations translated into slower gaming benchmarks throughout the board, though the Y70 Touch definitely proved playable at its native 1920x1080 resolution with medium pleasant portraits settings. Only Company of Heroes 2 had the machine beginning to break a sweat at 28.fifty six frames per 2d (common), otherwise the next lowest average was inside the 40s.
Things changed whilst we cranked up the photographs settings. Framerates took a success to beneath playable in Tomb Raider and Company of Heroes 2, and walked uncomfortably close to the line of what’s applicable within the 3 other titles.
| Lenovo Y70 Touch | MSI GS70 Stealth Pro | Maingear Pulse 15 | |
| 3DMark eleven | 5047 | 4231 | 4355 |
| PCMark 7 | 3832 | 6196 | 5904 |
| iTunes encoding | sixty eight seconds | fifty nine seconds | 58 seconds |
| File switch (small files) | 19 seconds | five seconds | four seconds |
| File transfer (unmarried big report) | 12 seconds | 4 seconds | three seconds |
| Cold boot time | 38 seconds | 12 seconds | 14 seconds |
For the the iTunes encoding check, we convert 14 MP3s (119MB) to 128Kbps ACC documents and degree the operation's period in seconds. The Y70 Touch completed the task in 68 seconds. That’s no longer the fastest we’ve seen, even though respectable.
For file transfers, we measure how lengthy it takes to duplicate two sets of files from one region to some other on the identical pressure. The small files take a look at consists of transferring 557 MP3s, totaling 2.56GB, while inside the huge document the identical MP3s have been zipped into a single 2.52GB record.
Battery Life
To check the battery existence of the Y70, we caught to our regular method, that is a video playback test that loops a 720p rip of the movie Inception (or as a minimum we think we did – we’re now not truely positive what’s real anymore after watching that flick) at full screen with max brightness and Wi-Fi disabled. This gives us a quite accurate approximation of a worst case situation (shop for gaming), and in this example, the computer stayed jogging for 2 hours and forty two mins.
For desirable measure, we repeated the check with the screen brightness dialed down to 60 percentage, a strategy that regularly yields extra run time. And it did, with the Y70 Touch refusing to give up the ghost till holding robust for 3 hours and 50 minutes – enough to look at more than one flicks on a move us of a flight.
Usage Impressions and Conclusion
After spending massive time checking out the Y70 Touch in real world situations, we were capable of get a better feel for the pc than what the benchmarks alone can provide. With that during thoughts, let’s start with the coolest.
This is a multimedia workhorse, and toward that give up, we have been maximum impressed with the display screen and speaker mixture. It’s no longer often that we felt the need to tap at the touchscreen panel, although on the few occasions we felt pressured to achieve this, it answered unexpectedly with none lag. It’s also a plus that the show didn’t leap backward and forward, which could in any other case negate the ease of a touchscreen.
The brightness, coloration duplicate, and average high-quality of the IPS panel are what we favored most approximately the show. There had been no nasty artifacts from viewing the display screen from off-angles, even intense ones, and with the brightness cranked up, the colors popped off the display in ways that TN panels just can’t reproduce.
Combined with the better-than-anticipated built-in audio system, the Y70 Touch is a nifty leisure device, whether it’s for watching movies, kicking returned to a cool playlist, or playing games. We’ll nevertheless turn to headphones while we want a higher quality audio revel in (or hard hitting bass), however on its own, it does an excellent activity of no longer making us reflect onconsideration on how plenty we typically hate laptop speakers.
Where the overall revel in starts offevolved to detour faraway from Awesome-ville towards Regret City is the storage scheme. We understand what Lenovo turned into going for here – spacious garage aided by NAND flash reminiscence for SSD-like speeds, however it falls quick on the latter. Way short.
We observed some of overall performance bugaboos, such as slow-loading packages that caused us to question whether we definitely double-clicked on its corresponding icon and, at instances, jerky video. The 5400 RPM spindle velocity is a severe detriment to normal performance that makes it sense like we’re trying to drive a sports card through quicksand. Simply placed, the alternative hardware underneath the hood can’t conquer the garage bottleneck, that's a disgrace given all the untapped potential. But hi there, at least there’s masses of room for all of your packages, even if it does take a painfully long time to put in them.
As a day by day driving force, we’re additionally disappointed with the low-profile keyboard. This falls decidedly at the subjective aspect, but unless you’re partial to flat-style planks, you’ll be plenty better served with an outside keyboard (Protip: go for mechanical key switches, you’ll thank us later).
While you’re at it, get your self a stable gaming mouse. That’s no longer every other knock in opposition to the Y70 Touch – touchpads simply don’t compare to an awesome ol’ rodent – however given the Y70 Touch’s capacity to game at its local decision on an above common show, it might be a disgrace to handiest use the device for TPS reviews and different uninteresting fare. The gradual spinning hard force isn’t a great deal of a aspect when you’re in recreation, and the GeForce GTX 860M GPU, while no longer the fastest discrete pictures on the block, packs a fair amount of pixel pushing punch. Besides, you’ll want some thing to occupy that lone USB 2.0 port so you don’t by accident shove a SuperSpeed USB three.0 flash force into it and suffer slow file transfers as a result.
So, where do we in the long run fall in this one? If no longer for the storage bottleneck, we’d be a lot more enthused approximately the Y70 Touch. It’s a tremendously thin and relatively mild (to a computing device alternative) gaming and amusement gadget that appears exceptional as well. However, you’ll fast lament the lack of an SSD, or as a minimum a faster mechanical hard pressure. It’s no longer an absolute deal killer, but it's far some thing to seriously don't forget when shopping around in this rate range.
score
Pros: Beautiful, colourful display. Good-enough gaming performance on medium graphics settings. Relatively skinny and light for a laptop its size. Above average audio.
Cons: The loss of an SSD takes a big toll on overall performance and at this rate it's a main letdown. Could use a further USB port. No hardware customization alternatives at the time of purchase so that you're stuck with the GTX 860M.
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